It's coming...just wait for it. Any minute now, the press will declare President Trump's ouster of secretary of state Rex Tillerson as "chaos" and "disarray." Such baloney. Tillerson was a good man, and he ably served the country in getting the Saudi Arabians to turn hard toward the West as the Iran threat loomed. That's a real achievement. The result we now see – from Saudis allowing women to drive to Saudis changing their stance toward Israel in a friendly direction to Saudis putting the screws to the local billionaire princeling financiers of Osama bin Laden and other lunatic forces,...

"The number of immigrants and their U.S.-born children (under 18) on Medicaid grew twice as fast as the number of natives and their children on Medicaid from 2011 to 2013 — 11 percent vs. 5 percent. About two-thirds of the growth in Medicaid associated with immigrants was among immigrants themselves, rather than the U.S.-born children of immigrants. The increase in Medicaid enrollment among immigrants and their children can be roughly estimated as costing $4.6 billion annually. By 2013, 25 percent of immigrants and their children were on Medicaid, compared to 16 percent of natives and their children.”

RAMALLAH — Palestinian leaders voted on Monday to call for the suspension of recognition of Israel, as they met in response to US President Donald Trump’s acknowledgement of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The vote ordered the Palestine Liberation Organisation to suspend its recognition of the Jewish state until Israel “recognizes the state of Palestine,” cancels its annexation of East Jerusalem, and stops settlement activity, a statement said. It was unclear if the vote by the Palestinian Central Council, a high-ranking arm of the PLO, was binding. A previous vote by the council in 2015 to suspend security coordination with Israel...

Land of leaving: Moving companies rank Illinois No. 1 for outbound vans Studies by two major American moving companies rank Illinois as the top “outbound” state of 2017. On Jan. 2, United Van Lines released its 41st annual National Movers Study and Atlas Van Lines released its 2017 Migration Patterns study. United based the study on its customers’ household moves made in 2017, and Atlas studied nearly 73,000 interstate and cross-border relocations of household goods from Jan. 1, 2017 through Dec. 15, 2017. In both studies, Illinois was home to the highest rate of outbound moves in the nation. United’s...

A pair of rogue regimes with a longing for nuclear weapons promise to dominate Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s second year atop Foggy Bottom. Tillerson, in following President Trump’s distaste for former President Barack Obama’s decision-making, declared in 2017 an end to the era of “strategic patience” with Iran and North Korea. As the nation’s top diplomat, he has to try to rally international support for Trump’s more aggressive posture. Diplomacy doesn’t stop at home, though. Tillerson has to persuade Congress to support his vision for reorganizing the State Department, while maintaining his position in the administration, which has seemed...

Illinois declined in population again in 2017, losing its spot as the fifth-largest state in the nation to Pennsylvania, according to census data released Wednesday. Illinois lost about 33,700 residents, dropping the total population to 12,802,023, the greatest numeric population loss of any state. Pennsylvania saw a slight increase, and with a total population of 12,805,537, has outranked Illinois for the first time in years, based on U.S. Census Bureau figures from July 1, 2016, to July 1, 2017. This is the fourth year in a row that Illinois’ population decreased, a troubling trend, according to William Frey, a demographer...

Audio: Mayor predicted people will 'get killed' on Amtrak route "It’s virtually inevitable that someone is going to get killed that wouldn’t be killed otherwise," Lakewood Mayor Don Anderson warned WSDOT about the new high-speed route. Author: Susannah Frame Published: 10:37 PM PST December 18, 2017 Two weeks before a high-speed Amtrak train derailed near DuPont, Lakewood Mayor Don Anderson warned the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) that the route could be deadly without additional safety precautions.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton struck a deal with the State Department while serving in the Obama administration that allowed her to take ownership of records she did not want made public, according to recently released reports. Clinton and her then-deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin were permitted to remove electronic and physical records under a claim they were "personal" materials and "unclassified, non-record materials." Judicial Watch made the revelation after filing a FOIA request with the State Department and obtaining a record of the agreement. The newly released documents show the deal allowed Clinton and Abedin to remove...

California’s high speed rail project is an embodiment of virtually everything wrong with state government. Already $1.7 billion over budget and seven years behind schedule on the Central Valley portion alone, the bullet train reeks of cronyism, inefficient central planning, misplaced priorities and squandering of finite resources. Yet, it persists, despite obvious problems. On Nov. 14, Assemblyman Jim Patterson, R-Fresno, requested an emergency audit of the bullet train. The request came as high speed rail authorities reported that environmental reviews of the 800-mile project won’t be completed until at least 2020, two years later than planned. Against a backdrop of...

Multiple reports surfaced this week that the White House was looking to ouster Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in the next few weeks, with talk of replacing him with CIA Director Mike Pompeo. When the press asked about the reports Friday during a meeting with Libya's prime minister at the State Department, the former Exxon Mobil CEO said the claims are “laughable.” The New York Times said the plan was developed by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly ever since Trump’s relationship with Tillerson is said to have “soured.” Mr. Trump spoke harshly about Mr. Tillerson in front of...

White House chief of staff John Kelly called the State Department on Thursday to dispel media reports that a plan had been developed to remove Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, agency spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.

The White House has mapped out a plan in which Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is replaced in the next few weeks with current CIA Director Mike Pompeo, according to a report. Senior administration officials told the New York Times Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., would then take over for Pompeo as director of the CIA. Cotton has indicated he would take the post if President Trump offered it to him, the officials said. However, it’s unknown whether the president has approved the transition plan. A spokesperson for Cotton said the senator’s “focus is on serving Arkansans in the Senate.” The...

WASHINGTON — Of all the State Department employees who might have been vulnerable in the staff reductions that Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson has initiated as he reshapes the department, the one person who seemed least likely to be a target was the chief of security, Bill A. Miller. Republicans pilloried Hillary Clinton for what they claimed was her inadequate attention to security as secretary of state in the months before the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya. Congress even passed legislation mandating that the department’s top security official have unrestricted access to the secretary of state. But in...

Justice Neil Gorsuch gave the most significant public address of his tenure on the nation’s highest court Thursday when he addressed the Federalist Society’s annual dinner, recently named in honor of the last man to hold his seat: Antonin Scalia. The newest Supreme Court justice took square aim at one of this year’s Federalist Society Convention’s main themes: the “administrative state,” the unelected mass of executive agency staff that actually creates most of the rules and regulations by which Americans live. Resistance of the administrative state’s growth and overreach is a driving force in the emergence of populist-nationalism and the...

The JFK Pentagon didn't want Viet Nam, it was Foggy Bottom that pushed it. Now, after the State Department at last became a wholly owned subsidiary of the Klinton Krime Korp, the roaches are running around crying havok, claiming that Tillerson is causing a brain drain.Let M*A*S*H 'Splain it to you.http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x59aj08 -- M*A*S*H -- The Ringbanger

Nov. 11 (UPI) -- The U.S. State Department is offering buyouts of up to $25,000 in an effort to trim 641 employees from its ranks, department officials said Saturday. A state official told ABC News the voluntary buyouts would be in addition to the normal attrition expected within the department by the end of 2018. Multiple officials told The New York Times that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's goal is to reduce the department by 8 percent, or 1,982 people. The department already has instituted hiring and promotion freezes, left a number of ambassadorships and senior leadership positions fulfilled and...

The U.S.’s ranks of diplomats are losing key leaders at a “dizzying speed” as the State Department struggles to recruit talent amid a hiring freeze and sinking morale in the Trump administration, according to a new letter from a top ambassador. Sixty percent of the agency’s career ambassadors, the highest rank for diplomats, have retired or quit since January. Nearly half of career ministers — the next level down and equivalent to the military’s three-star generals — are gone too, down to 19 from 33. The next-level minister counselors have seen their numbers drop by 62 diplomats since Labor Day...

A black Kansas man has admitted he put racist graffiti on his own car as a Halloween prank that got out of hand, police said Monday. Photographs posted on social media Wednesday showed the car covered with racial slurs against blacks and messages that included “Go Home,” ”Date your own kind,” and “Die.” The vehicle, covered in graffiti scrawled with washable paint, was parked Wednesday at an apartment complex near Kansas State University and the incident fueled racial tensions at the university and in the community.

I see this having a huge unintended consequence: the creation of "factory high-rate semi-autos", rifles that _come_ with bump stocks, gatling cranks, other creative mechanical solutions capable of out-of-box pushing the physical limits of how fast a semi-auto can be "fired". The buyer can then either remove the annoying high-rate device and use it normally, or just enjoy the popularization of a new exciting category of firearm. They haven't even had the first vote on it, and already we're cooking up workarounds and marketing methods.

Commentary: Welcome to the dysfunction of Illinois government Diana Sroka Rickert I walked into the Thompson Center on my first day, not knowing what to expect. In many ways, my new workplace was like any other large organization: big building, thousands of people and plenty of broken computers. Except this building is dilapidated, many of the employees are political hires and the computers will never be repaired, ever. And it’s all paid for by you, Illinois taxpayers. “Welcome to state government,” said a new colleague, as we boarded the elevator for the 16th floor. This summer I got to see...